


Not to eat

by Melime



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Banter, Community: jd_ficathon, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M, Off-World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 01:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11957157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime
Summary: “Well, they did call us ‘not-food’ so I think we’re safe.”While on a mission, the SG-1 team finds an alien species that looks a lot like orcs, and Jack isn't sure if they can be trusted when they say they don't see the team as food.





	Not to eat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivulet027](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivulet027/gifts).
  * Translation into Português brasileiro available: [Não para comer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973231) by [Melime GreenLeaf (Melime)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime%20GreenLeaf)



> For rivulet027, who asked for banter and literary/comic book reference (with optional Jack's clone from Fragile Balance, that I couldn't find a way to fit). I hope you like it!
> 
> Thank you to my beta feygrim.

Jack had a bad feeling about this, and it had nothing to do with the fact that this alien species looked like the orcs had jumped out of Tolkien’s pages. Well, maybe a little to do with it, after all, it was hard to trust something with so many teeth and that kept so few of them actually inside its mouth.

The small party was armed only with some hunting weapons, but they looked like they could take more than a few shots without going down, and even just six of them could do some damage if they managed to launch a surprise attack.

Which was precisely why Jack didn’t like how close Daniel was getting to them.

“Daniel,” Jack said as a warning. Which here meant ‘give me a good reason not to drag your ass back to the gate before they bite your head off’.

“One second,” Daniel said without looking at his team, before going back to growling at the aliens. This took far longer than a second.

“Daniel,” Jack warned again, here meaning ‘right now’.

“Ok,” Daniel headed back to his team. “They are hunters, and they understand we are peaceful explorers.”

“Are you certain they do not intend us harm, Daniel Jackson?” Teal’c asked.

“Well, they did call us ‘not-food’ so I think we’re safe.”

“They called us _what_?” Sam asked.

“It’s a bit of a loose translation, their language doesn’t translate well into English.”

“How loose are we talking about here?” Jack intervened.

Daniel winced. “I understood about half of it? I think they referred to themselves as hunters and to us as ‘not to eat’ or maybe ‘not suitable to eat’. I did manage to say ‘we travelers peace look-for-things’, not exactly eloquent, but they seemed to approve of that, and offered to show us a temple.”

Jack raised an eyebrow incredulously.

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Fine, they said ‘glowy-place symbols on stone’. Translation demands a certain level of creativity. Now, can we go see the temple?”

Jack wondered how much ‘creativity’ Daniel was applying here. Usually, he would trust Daniel’s translation, but then again, usually they wouldn’t be pursuing a lost city that Daniel read about in some other planet and was all but obsessed with finding.

“Carter?”

“They only have spears and one bow that can’t have more than two hundred meters reach with any accuracy. I wouldn’t turn my back to them, but I think this temple is worth checking out.”

Of course, he should have suspected. If ‘symbols on stone’ was the magical expression to catch Daniel’s attention, ‘glowy place’ was Carter’s, between the promise of new technology and a whole temple to explore, of course the two of them were eager to go.

“Teal’c?” he asked even though he already suspected what the answer would be.

“We are explorers, are we not?”

Jack gave the group of hunters one last look. Although they _seemed_ threatening, they hadn’t done anything to show even the slightest hostility.

“Fine.”

Jack just hoped he didn’t regret agreeing to that.

\---

Jack regretted agreeing to that.

The biggest issue was that the ‘temple’, if it could be called that, was located inside a cave, or rather it was a cave, with far too many dark tunnels to cover. Even though they were near the exit, it was still too dangerous, especially when half his team was too busy looking at the walls to pay attention to their surroundings.

“Oh,” Daniel said softly, more to himself than to anyone else. Jack knew that tone of voice.

In two steps he was right next to Daniel, close enough to talk without drawing too much attention from the hunters. “How bad?”

“Well, you see, having access to their written language actually makes it easier to understand because I was able to find a common basis between this and the language from that people from P3X-”

“Daniel,” Jack said, here meaning ‘just get to the point and tell me if we’re all going to die’.

“When I said they called us ‘not to eat’, what they actually said was probably closer to ‘not ready to eat’. And I think on the way over here one of them may have said something along the lines of ‘fire make ready to eat’.” He had more of an explanation prepared, about how this distinction had fascinating implications, but Jack didn’t give him time to continue.

“Leaving, now,” he said, loud enough for the rest of his team to hear.

“Sir,” Carter called, pointing out that more of the hunters had began gathering around them. Considerably more. A quick glance told Jack they were outnumbered at least ten to one.

Jack made a mental note never to trust orcs that classify people on whether they are eatable.

\---

As luck would have it, the orcs, as they were called everywhere but in the final reports, had terrible vision. Which explained why they wanted all their ‘prey’ in one tight spot with only one exit. So, once they managed to make it to open field, firing high and running evasively proved to be an effective tactic. Which didn’t mean they were able to escape without a scratch.

“You know, I don’t remember agreeing into turning my bed into your second office,” Jack said, as he tried to find a place to sit on his own bed.

“You heard Janet, two days of bed rest or she won’t clear me for duty,” Daniel said, pointing to his sprained ankle with the print he was holding.

“Which you only agreed to because it gives you time to finish translating these pictures. Now, you do realize the keyword in ‘bed rest’ is ‘rest’ and not ‘bed’, right?”

“Is that coffee?” Daniel asked, completely ignoring Jack’s remark.

Jack handed him one of the mugs he had brought with him. “I knew leaving you alone all day wasn’t a good idea, how did you even get all of this? You didn’t bring anything with you yesterday.”

“Called the office, asked someone to send me the pictures, and used your printer. Which reminds me, you’re out of ink,” Daniel said without taking his eyes from his work.

Jack sighed. Good thing he thought of hiding some office supplies in the kitchen cabinet, behind the pans and pots so he knew Daniel would never find it, as Daniel’s idea of cooking was microwaving leftovers.

“Oh, and I took your hidden stash too.”

Unless he was bored enough, apparently. Jack made a mental note never to leave a bored Daniel alone.

“Fine, I’ll get some tomorrow after work.” Which meant he couldn’t do all his reports at home and then spend the day pretending to be slacking, but there are worse fates.

“I should be done with this translations by then, now that I have better resources, I can see where I went wrong.”

“As long as you realize this is just an academic exercise since we are never going back to that planet.”

That got Daniel’s attention. “Jack!”

“They tried to eat us!”

“There’s still so much we can learn from that temple! I was only able to record a portion of the inscriptions.”

“Yes, you stopped because they tried to eat us, you do remember that part?”

“Actually, that may have been my fault. I think I used the wrong inflection and told them we were in search of food. Much of their language revolves around what can and can’t be eaten, and I think mentioning food to hunters could constitute a challenge, I haven’t gotten to that part yet, but that could be the reason they attacked us.”

Jack wanted to point out that, even if that were the case, the fact that they gave this much importance to food wasn’t a good sign, but he had a feeling Daniel would insist on listing every language that had an excessive focus on one area or another as proof that it didn’t mean anything, and that was a rant he didn’t feel like listening to.

“We challenged them and then ran, how do you think they’ll see this?”

“But now I can explain what happened! I think. I’m not entirely sure they have the vocabulary I need for this, but I could be inventive.”

“No.”

“But look at this,” he said, pointing at a piece of the wall that looked much like the rest of the wall, “they talk about sharing the planet with another intelligent species. You know how rare it is for the same planet to develop two entirely different intelligent life forms, Sam is going to love this. And the other species had a whole civilization developed, maybe they were the ones who made the city we are looking for.”

“ _Had_? What happened to this other species?” Jack asked, already guessing the answer.

Daniel deflated, obviously aware that his plan to convince Jack had failed.”They went extinct. But all their monuments are still there to be studied!”

“And did our friends, the orcs, have anything to do with that extinction?”

“They call themselves the ‘urrgh’, I told you this already. And the other species was the ‘tuhr’, which I think means ‘puny thinkers’. Another indicative that they were a highly intelligent species that needs to be studied.”

“Daniel…”

“Fine, it does say the urrgh ate all the tuhr but that doesn’t mean that the planet isn’t worth exploring further. And I don’t have enough context, maybe it was the tuhr that started the war, maybe the urrgh were just defending themselves, we can’t judge them based on just the information we have, we need more details.”

“So, to recap, they ate the other intelligent species they shared the planet with, and they tried to eat us. And now you want to go back to give them another chance to eat us?”

Daniel started to rebut that, but then conceded. “When you put it like that, it sounds…”

“Like you want to risk your life again just so you can look at some ruins that may or may not be significant?”

“You know, you have a way of wording things so they sound very negative.”

“And you have a way of wording things so you’ll convince me to let you do something risky just because you’re curious, but it’s not going to work this time.”

Daniel raised one of the prints. “But…” he started, with the look of a lost child, “the symbols.”

Jack sighed, Daniel always did know how to convince him. “We are not going back to the planet.” He raised a finger to stop Daniel, who was about to interrupt. “But, I suppose we could try to use a MALP to explore the cave, since it was so close to the gate.”

“But what if they have other temples with more information?”

“How about you take this and then, if you really feel like there’s more to be explored there after you analyse the first set of data, we can see what we can do about that.”

They wouldn’t go back to the planet, not a chance, but Jack knew Daniel would soon be distracted with another great finding and would forget about that, so it wasn’t too much of a risk.

“But…”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Fine,” Daniel said, looking far too disappointed for someone who had just gotten almost everything he wanted.

“Now hand me these papers, no more work for you today.”

To his surprise, Daniel didn’t protest.

“As long as I can have you instead.”


End file.
